Man as a Being of Spirit and Soul

Schmidt Number: S-3489

On-line since: 15th November, 2012

Man as a Being of Spirit and Soul

The science of spirit, about which I have had the honor
to lecture for many years now, here in Stuttgart, as well as in
other places, is, I believe, based upon a need arising out of
the cultural and spiritual life of the present time. It does
not arise simply because someone may feel it to be a good idea.
In order to realize that it is just at the present time that
this science has to make a start, it is perhaps necessary to
see how particular spiritual impulses arise at certain moments
during the whole evolution of human spiritual and cultural
life. It is not so difficult to see that the science of spirit
has a connection with the present time similar to the
connection that the Copernican outlook had with its time. Just
as the latter could not have existed at an earlier period, so,
too, with the science of spirit. We only have to compare, on
the basis of true knowledge, the way the scientific
outlook obtains its results —
and has obtained them for some time
— with the way this outlook is taken
up by the widest circles of humanity in order to provide a
basis for questions concerning the soul and the spirit. We need
only to look at the method of research and the way it has
spread and to compare it with the scientific outlook of
centuries ago, which had prevailed for thousands of years of
human evolution. In those earlier times people looked at nature
and its phenomena in quite a different way from today and
the last two, three, four hundred years. In earlier times when
people looked at nature and its processes they took something
spiritual, something of a soul nature, into their own soul and
spirit life. It was not like today when the phenomena of nature
are investigated purely as phenomena, as far as possible
eliminating everything of a spirit-soul nature.

This is not a criticism of the modern scientific
outlook — on the contrary.
The success of the scientific outlook, which certainly has a
significant purpose both for the present and the future, is due
to its efforts to eliminate everything of a spirit-soul nature
from the observation of natural phenomena. It
concentrates solely on observing processes in nature without
bringing into these processes anything of a spirit- soul
nature. On the other hand it has become absolutely necessary to
satisfy the unquenchable need of the human soul to approach the
great riddles of existence scientifically from a different
viewpoint. It is just because natural science has to keep to
its serious and conscientious method and is obliged to
eliminate spirit-soul nature that a science of spirit, based on
the example and ideal of natural science, must take its place
alongside natural science, working in the same way as natural
science, but from different sources.

It cannot be said that the present time has got very far
in formulating a view about the relationship of natural science
to any endeavors of a more spiritually scientific kind. It is
just the most serious questions about the life of the soul and
the spirit, about the eternal nature of the being of man, about
human freedom and all that is connected with it, that are
excluded and have been banned from the outlook based on natural
science since the middle of the 19th century. And it is a
fact that great and outstanding scientists of the present time
find themselves in a strange position. We have already seen how
it is only recently that outstanding scientists have
shaken off the scientific romanticism of Darwinism prevalent in
the second half of the 19th century.

We could take hundreds of scientists and thinkers to
illustrate our point, but we shall take one as an example. We
have seen how a scientist like Oskar Hertwig has managed
to bring the fantastic tendencies of naturalism, which have
threatened to run wild, back on to a saner basis. And a book
such as Oskar Hertwig's Das Werden der Organismen,
Eine Darwinische Zufallstheorie, a book
by an eminent pupil of
Haeckel, — such
a book, even from a scientific viewpoint, has great
significance. Much could be added in this respect that is
equally significant or nearly so. We can see from such
achievements, which cannot be sufficiently recognized in their
own sphere, what predicament serious scientists are in
regarding questions of the soul and spirit. In reading Oskar
Hertwig's influential book we have just referred to, we cannot
help being aware of a certain feeling or attitude toward
questions of spiritual life. We find that a scientist like
Oskar Hertwig makes quite clear that he cannot approach
questions of the soul or spirit with the means at his disposal,
the means of a stringent science. On one page he says this
clearly and definitely: Science can only concern itself with
the transitory sense world; science cannot approach the
eternal in human nature.

So far, so good — and
one would think that the way is now open for a science of
spirit, for the scientist himself points out that a science of
spirit should exist alongside natural science. But,
unfortunately, there is something else to be found among
scientists, which is not said explicitly, but which can be read
quite clearly between the lines. The opinion is spread
abroad — albeit
unconsciously — that the
method employed by the scientist is the only exact one, and
that it is possible to be scientific only so long as one keeps
to the outer sense world. —
People then believe that a departure from the sense
world is bound to lead into a world of fantasy and
dreams. — What is so
dangerous in this is that it is not clearly expressed, but
arises as a kind of feeling out of what is achieved and spreads
into the widest circles of people. It is to be found in those
who believe they understand a lot about the scientific outlook
and wish to draw conclusions affecting spiritual life from the
scientific outlook, and also in those who think themselves
enlightened because they read the supplement of their local
paper every Sunday which breathes this kind of feeling I have
described as spreading into the widest circles.

Thus, on the one hand, the scientific outlook points with
great emphasis to the need for the coming into being of a
science of spirit, but on the other it takes the ground away
from under its feet. This was crystallized in a famous speech
by Dubois-Reymond, the great physiologist, which I have
referred to here in Stuttgart, and which he gave before an
obviously enlightened meeting of scientists in Leipzig in the
70's. It was crystallized in his lecture, The Limits
of Natural Knowledge,
where he stated that natural knowledge is not able to
give any information about even the simplest phenomena of
the life of the soul, and that science comes to an end where
the super-sensible begins. —
With this it is admitted on the one hand that
natural science is not able to say anything about the
super-sensible, but on the other it emphatically takes away the
ground for all super-sensible investigation. The science of
spirit has to struggle against these aims and efforts today.
For it sets out to face and treat scientifically the questions
which the human soul turns to in great longing
— the question of the eternal nature
of the human soul, of the freedom of human action and the
countless other questions which are connected to these two main
questions.

But now from another viewpoint we come to much the same
result. If in trying to inform ourselves about such matters we
turn, not to science, but to the work of philosophers, we
find just as little satisfaction there. What is offered is, on
the whole, — for someone
really seeking spiritual substance in cultural life
— nothing more than a collection of
abstract concepts, which do not offer anything pertaining to
the pressing questions about the life of the human soul and
spirit. But it is perhaps just in this subject that we can
ascertain why it is not possible at the present time to find
out anything substantial about these questions outside the
actual sphere of the science of spirit. And it is just the work
of philosophers which reveals something rather odd, which is
also the reason why I have called today's lecture a study of
man as a being of spirit and soul.

In looking into a modern textbook
on psychology or into anything philosophical in
order to inform ourselves about the questions we are
considering, we come across a way of regarding things which,
even if we go beyond purely materialistic thinking, is
completely tied up with the idea that man is a being of body
and soul. This idea of man as a being of body and soul governs
the enlightened and impressive philosophers of today. It is
therefore imperative to show that this outlook leads us astray
when it comes to investigating the complete being of man.
If in investigating the human being we start with the premise
that everything that arises in connection with the soul and
body should be divided into body and soul, we are doing the
same as a chemist who assumes from the start that a substance
he is investigating can have only two constituent parts.
Therefore when he makes his chemical analysis, he finds
he cannot get very far. Another person discovers that a result
was not possible because the substance the chemist took was
composed of three elements, and not of two as the chemist had
imagined. It is just the same with the way people look at the
being of man. It is imagined that we have to find two elements,
body and soul. In fact, we can make progress only by dividing
the being of man into three parts:
body, soul and spirit. Otherwise, we always arrive at an
impossible mix-up between spirit and soul, which is no more use
for acquiring enlightenment concerning the human being than a
mix-up of the bodily life and soul life which comes about
through not differentiating them .properly. What is really
meant by dividing man not only into a being with a soul and a
body on the one hand, but into a being with a soul and a spirit
on the other, becomes clear in looking at the way the physical
sciences of man, biology, physiology, anatomy, and so on, arise
out of purely human experience, out of the experience of
physical life of the human being. Let us take a particular
case. The human being experiences hunger, satisfaction,
need to breathe, and so on, in life. These are immediate,
I would like to say, inner experiences. In the first
place they are really dependent on material
substances, but hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe, are
also experienced in the soul. The scientist investigates
the bodily basis of hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe,
and the like. If we want to found a physical science, a science
of the human body, we cannot stop at the fact that hunger is
experienced in different ways. If we wanted to experience
being very hungry or not very hungry, very thirsty or not very
thirsty, or different kinds of hunger or thirst, we would not
be able to found a science of the physical body. We have to go
beyond the purely inner experience and investigate the body
with scientific methods. We then discover that hunger, thirst,
the need to breathe, evolve certain chemical, physical
processes in the physical body and we arrive at a physiological
and biological science of man. We have to go beyond what we
experience purely inwardly, and subject the body by itself to
scientific investigation.

Just as on the one hand we have to go beyond our
immediate experience to lay the basis for a physical
science, just as the body provides the physical basis for our
soul experience, so on the other we have to go beyond our soul
experience to find the spiritual reality that underlies
it.

In examining our physical nature the ordinary scientist
discovers certain physical processes in the digestive system
which correspond to the inner experiences of hunger, thirst and
the need to breathe. The question is bound to arise: Is there
something — if I may use what
is naturally a paradoxical expression
— that corresponds to the soul
experience from the other direction, which could be called a
kind of “spiritual
digestion” as compared to
physical digestion? Of course it sounds like a paradox,
speaking on the one hand about ordinary digestion, which is
perfectly acceptable because it belongs to the province
of a recognized science, and on the other hand about a
spiritual digestion, a change which takes place in the spirit.
Nevertheless we shall attempt to show today that this
paradoxical expression does in fact correspond to
a real situation.

It is no more possible to arrive at a science of spirit
by investigating inwardly the nature of the soul, which surges
to and fro in our thinking, feeling and willing as our inner
experience, than it is to found a physical science only on the
basis of an inward observation of hunger, thirst, and the need
for breath. We have to appreciate that as far as our normal,
everyday consciousness is concerned, our physical nature only
reveals its outer surface. What does the human being in his
everyday life know about all the complicated processes, the
physical, chemical processes, which physical science brings to
the light of day as the basis of what we experience as hunger,
thirst and the need to breathe? Just compare what we see of the
body in everyday life, which is more or less its outward form,
its capacity for movement, its physiognomy, just compare this,
which is something everyone can know about without bothering
about science, with the picture of the human being as shown in
anatomy, physiology or biology, and you will see how our
ordinary experience of our bodies is related to the
investigation of science.

But now on the other hand it is also a fact that the
spirit reveals itself no more to the human being than does the
body reveal itself beyond its outward form, and that from the
sphere of the spirit just as little or just as much is hidden
to the human being as is hidden to him in ordinary life of
those processes which have first to be investigated by
science.

What is it then that belongs to the spirit which is
actually orientated toward our inner experience? We shall see
today that the part of his spiritual life that is orientated
toward the human being, but which he does not always even
recognize as such, is nothing other than what is
encompassed in the simple, unequivocal but significant
word
“I.”
This
“I”
we shall see belongs to the spirit, but it is related to
the whole spirit in the same way that our outward form, our
physiognomy, the movement of our limbs which is all
orientated toward the ordinary body, are related to
physiology, biology, to the science of the body. We can never
arrive at a science of the body by feeling a little or very
hungry, or by comparing one state of hunger with another, or by
immersing ourselves in our hunger; neither can we arrive
at a science of the spirit of the human being by immersing
ourselves in our experience of feeling, thinking and
imagination. We have to realize that so-called mysticism,
which is supposed to be an immersion in one's own inner being,
and which seeks to experience this inner being in a
somewhat different way from our normal experience, that
mysticism, this kind of inward immersion, cannot lead to
a science of spirit any more than a differentiated experience
of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe can lead to a
science of the body. We have to start with our purely inner
experience of hunger and thirst and proceed from there to the
body, to the things that are arrived at through scientific
method. Likewise we have to start with our purely mystical soul
life and proceed from there to what lies spiritually outside
this soul life. And this spiritual nature has naturally to be
investigated according to scientific method in the strictest
possible way, just as the life of the human body is
investigated.

Now it is true that the methods of investigating
spiritual life are in fact spiritual, and therefore are quite
different from the means employed by natural science. And so my
first task is to indicate the purpose and significance of the
methods used by the science of spirit. It is not possible to
embark upon the investigation of spiritual life without first
having arrived at certain things in ordinary, everyday soul
life. Without having reached a certain point in our ordinary
soul life, in which we follow the course of our own inner
being, we are not able to train ourselves to be a scientist of
spirit. As long as we are satisfied with our
ordinary, everyday soul life, as long as we
derive full satisfaction from mystical experience
and revel in it in order to immerse
ourselves in our soul life, we shall never be
able to train ourselves as real scientists of
spirit. The preliminary
qualification for the science of spirit is that
in a particular respect we feel the insufficiency of our
ordinary soul life as a result of our own experience of
it.

I have pointed out in earlier lectures that it is
particularly a study of the so-called border areas of science
that can help us to acquire this feeling. In dealing with this
subject I am fond of citing a really significant question which
arises in connection with these border areas, and which the
eminent scientist, Friedrich Theodor
Vischer, came upon as he was struggling to clarify his
own outlook. He came to ask —
and you can find this in his beautiful treatise,
Die Traumphantasie
— what is the real connection between
the soul and the bodily nature? And here he lighted upon a real
question relating to the border-area of human knowledge.
Vischer says: it is quite certain that the soul nature cannot
be in the bodily nature, but it is also just as certain that it
cannot be sought outside the body.
— Hence he arrives at a complete
contradiction. Such contradictions often arise where we do not
simply consider knowledge as concerning outward, tangible facts
alone, but where we really have to struggle inwardly to acquire
our knowledge. Those who know what it is to have to struggle
for knowledge speak of hundreds of such border-points occurring
in knowledge. It is only a superficial mind which, when faced
with such questions, is content to say that human cognition can
go only a certain distance and no further. In contenting
ourselves with this information, we are blocking our own
way to a real science of spirit. For here we are not concerned
with evolving all sorts of logical thoughts about such
questions, but with steeping our wrestling souls in them
and really experiencing them, and this means giving up the
logical approach where it can no longer be applied. We
have to get to the heart of what for normal human
cognition is a contradiction in such a border-area, and feel
the full weight of it on our souls.

If we do not simply regard these questions as comfortable
cushions upon which to rest and proceed no further, but if on
the contrary we really seek to experience them, then we find
that it is just what lives and moves in such a living
contradiction that kindles our inner soul life in a way that
does not happen in normal life, that it is at just such a point
as this that our inner soul life can reach a stage beyond its
normal experience. In order not to become lost when we reach
such a point in the experience of a border-area, we have to be
able to grasp inwardly how in certain moments of his life the
human being is unable to get beyond himself, but yet is able to
point to something beyond himself. What is needed is that a
particular inner feeling is developed which can be the result
of living at such border-points of knowledge. This feeling can
be characterized in the following words. It can be
characterized very easily, for the experience which this
feeling brings is something that cuts deep down into the soul.
If we experience the questions of the border-areas properly, we
do not say that there are limits to human knowledge, but we say
that we are unable to cross the threshold with all the things
we have acquired through our thinking and research into the
outer sense world. We can impose a certain resignation, a
certain renunciation upon ourselves, we can learn at such
points not to want to judge the super-sensible with what we have
learned and experienced in the sense world.

It is here that the main obstacles lie for most people in
entering upon the science of spirit. They see the limits of
knowledge but they do not then have the courage to renounce or
resign. They do not say that they cannot try to enter into the
spiritual world with what they have learned and
experienced in the sense world, but they try to penetrate
beyond these limits, even if only in a negative sense, by using
the kind of concepts and ideas acquired in studying the sense
world. The one person does it by constructing all sorts of
hypotheses about what could exist in the super-sensible, the
other by rejecting the super-sensible completely on the basis of
his study of the sense world; in other words, taking upon
himself the capacity to make judgments about the
super-sensible with the concepts he has acquired from the
sense world. Those also have not understood the experience of
the border-areas of knowledge who, like
materialists, monists and the like, begin to
decide that nothing exists beyond the sense world on the basis
of the ideas and concepts acquired through the life of
the senses.

This is the point where something quite
special must arise within human soul life, where
what I have just characterized, this renunciation of the
concepts acquired through living in the sense-world, where we
do not just wish to make a statement or bring something
intellectual and logical to expression, but that this
renunciation becomes an inner intellectual virtue,
something that — if I may be
excused the phrase — cuts
into human soul life, so that at certain points we really
acquire a subtle feeling that we should not proceed
further with what we have learned in the sense-world. For if
this renunciation is not just a logical admission or an
intellectual conclusion, but an inner virtue, then this virtue
arising out of the renunciation radiates toward the inner life
of the soul, and then what we have renounced outwardly is
taken up into the inner life of the soul. The
renunciation makes us fit for undertaking in course of
time the two spiritual functions necessary
to penetrate from the sphere of the soul in human
experience into the spiritual world. For this two inner
functions are necessary, but which, as you can see from my
book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
and its Attainment, involve many
individual functions and exercises, which are contained in
these two main aims, for which there are two main functions.
The first is that we achieve real self observation; the second
consists in striving to experience the soul-spirit sphere that
is no longer dependent on the bodily nature, but proceeds
purely in the spirit. However paradoxical it may appear to
present-day humanity, it must nevertheless be said that this
second function consists in the human being forming his
soul-spirit life in such a way that when he investigates the
spirit, his soul-spirit experience is no longer in the body,
but outside it. This is no doubt something that appears quite
ridiculous to those who think they keep firmly within the
province of the scientific outlook. But the science of spirit
will bring home to people that many of our ideas will have to
be changed, even into the opposite of what we are
accustomed to, just as the Copernican outlook meant a
complete reversal in the way people thought about the
relationship of the planets to the sun.

What is normally called self-observation, an introversion
of the soul, is not what is meant by true self-observation by
the science of spirit. It is true that one can start from this
brooding in oneself in order to find the way one has to go
toward true self-observation, but real self-observation has to
be taken in hand much more seriously and much more
energetically. For it includes something which even earnest
psychologists maintain is impossible. I have already pointed
out in earlier lectures that when philosophers speak about the
human soul they find it characteristic that in certain respects
the life of the soul is not able to observe itself. They point
out that if we have learned a poem by heart and then wish to
recite it, but at the same time observing ourselves as we
recite, we begin to falter and interrupt ourselves. It is not
possible to carry out something and at the same time stand by
and observe ourselves. This is cited as being something
characteristic of the human soul, that it cannot do this. Now
it must be said that those who find that this is in fact so,
that it is impossible, will not get anywhere with the science
of spirit, because this
“impossibility”
is just what the scientist of spirit has to achieve. The
ability or capacity which is brought to our notice in normal
life when we observe ourselves reciting and make ourselves
falter, this ability has to be acquired by the scientist of
spirit. We have to be able to split our soul-life wide open so
that we can observe scientifically what we ourselves do. It is
not all that important to learn a poem to achieve this,
although this is one way of doing it, providing we do the
necessary practice, and it is also good preparation for the
real exercise of self- observation if we do it. It is a form of
preparation to achieve reciting a poem with all its shades of
feeling sufficiently automatically
— if I may use such a crude
expression — that we do not
interrupt ourselves when we observe ourselves while reciting.
The important thing, however, is not to concentrate on
the outer aspects, but to apply such activity to the life of
the soul itself. This means that we have to observe how one
thought follows another, our thinking and imaginative
life, so that at the same time we can allow the thought
processes to proceed while on the other hand we can observe
them in full consciousness. It would lead too far now to
describe how this is done, but you can read about it in my
books, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its
Attainment, in Riddles
of Man, and similar books. It is
absolutely possible to achieve real self-observation in this
way. It is not then a mere intellectual process, but it is
something real, for it is a first beginning of the emergence of
the spirit- nature out of the soul-nature. The experience of
the soul is observed by the spirit which has really tried to
separate itself from the soul-nature. But this is only one
aspect of what can be observed.

Now it is necessary to add that renouncing entering the
super-sensible with the concepts and according to the laws taken
from the sense world becomes a virtue and permeates the entire
life of the soul, and when this has happened it not only
produces the kind of modesty we are used to from normal life,
but it produces an inward, intellectual modesty and humility
which make us suited in the first place to exercising
self-observation of the kind I have just been speaking about.
We are not intimately organized enough, as it were, to be able
to carry out such self-observation until we have radiated this
intellectual virtue over our own souls.

But, on the other hand, something else is necessary. What
then is attained when we achieve such self-observation? What is
achieved when self-observation is practiced is that what
normally disturbs the human being when he carries out a soul
function is taken in hand, and our will is strengthened
and driven out of the sphere of the soul into the sphere of the
spirit. Then there is something further that has to be striven
for: the will itself has to take on a new direction, has to
acquire a new mode of activity in the soul. This can happen
only if the human being does not employ the will as he normally
does in ordinary life in carrying out outward functions, but if
he employs it in carrying out inner functions. In living
in his sense perception and in the ideas and images derived
from these perceptions, the human being is accustomed in the
way and sequence in which his thoughts are constructed to being
led by the sense world. He allows one thought to follow another
because he first experiences one event in the sense world, then
a second one, and so on.

The human being allows his thoughts to follow the
sequence of outer events and in ordinary life he hardly
ever gets used to leading his will into his thought life, into
the inner processes of his soul, which are to be perceived just
by this true self-observation. But this he has to do if he is
to become a scientist of spirit. He has to try
— for a long time, energetically and
patiently — to lead his will
into his thinking and power of imagination. Again and
again he has to try to carry out a process of the soul which in
an objective and genuine sense can be called meditating, an
inner reflection, though not a dreamy, mystical
reflection, but one which represents a real process in the
inner life, so that the will is really led into the thinking.
Whereas we are normally accustomed to arranging our ideas
according to outer events, we endeavor in moments set aside for
the purpose, to formulate ideas whose sequence is
determined solely by the inner will working according to a much
greater view of life. We guide the will into our life of images
and ideas. In this way we come to recognize what sort of
relationship can exist between the inner will of man and his
life of images and ideas. We do not become acquainted with this
at all in our normal consciousness. In order to make this point
perfectly clear, I would like to give the following
illustration. Imagine a person living in a semi-sleeping state
in dreams. He knows full well that these dreams are pictures
passing before his soul according to certain laws. These
pictures surge to and fro. Because they appear, so far as
normal life is concerned, as dream pictures, the human being
cannot control them with his will. If in his semi-sleeping
state he were able to pull himself together to such an extent
that he could control the sequence of dream pictures, he would
then more or less be in the position I have been talking about,
where our own will controls the ideas and images we
ourselves make.

But this is not the point that matters ultimately.
Everything we have discussed so far is only a preparatory
exercise. For we naturally do not arrive at anything real
only by the inner will controlling the sequence of ideas, which
we know are not remembered, but arise out of the body. We do
not arrive at anything special by piecing together ideas we
have made, and can survey. But we do attain something when we
set to work on the exercises with the mood which makes the
renunciation into an intellectual virtue. Then we gradually
notice something quite special in the life of the soul. And I
may be allowed to say that what I have to say here about the
science of spirit, by means of which we can really penetrate
into spiritual spheres and which should be imagined as already
having attained a certain development, and which also empowers
one to say something about the spiritual world, that it should
not be thought that it is like maintaining that natural science
has its strict method which takes years to learn, and now the
science of spirit comes along and talks about such inner ideas
and images. This is not the case. Those who have acquainted
themselves with biology and physiology, and know about their
scientific methods and have then taken up the science of spirit
know that however difficult it may be and that however much
patience is demanded over the years by scientific method,
significant results can be experienced in the science of spirit
only if even more patience and even more work, even when this
work is purely spiritual, are employed. Years of inner work are
necessary to achieve anything of any consequence that can
penetrate into the spiritual world, work which has been
characterized as the leading of the will into our thought life
by means of the inner functions or exercises which you can find
in the above-mentioned books. We only have to know the
one and the other to realize that the
seriousness of the one is not inferior to the seriousness of
the other. But what is important is not that we do the
exercises, but that we achieve what we are able to achieve by
means of the mood of renunciation. And we gradually notice that
it is not our will alone, not the will which we have led into
our thinking and imagination, that lives in what happens in our
souls, but something else lives in them.

In our observation of the outer world we see how one
event follows another, how one object is related to another,
and how the sequence of our ideas follows what we see, follows
the thread of outer events. Now we discover what it is that
permits one idea to arise out of another, what it is that
ensures that we do not add just any soul experience to another,
but order such experiences according to an inner process. We
discover a continual current in the life of the soul. Just as
outer sense-nature is inner physical nature, so spiritual
nature lives in the life of the soul. Whoever believes that we
can still act arbitrarily or out of prejudice does not know
this inner necessity. It is just as much a necessity as is
necessity in ordinary life, and it fashions an inner, spiritual
experience just as our ordinary experience comes to us by
necessity according to the course of events in the physical
world.

One who has had to do with the science of spirit for
decades may well be allowed to speak of his experience,
and this is, that this experience reveals what it is like
through its own nature, its own character; arbitrariness
ceases, and it is the spirit that orders the sequence of soul
experiences. This comes to light when we set out to penetrate a
particular sphere of the spiritual world with assumptions,
acquired according to our images of the sense world, that
spiritual beings or processes have to behave in a particular
way. In countless cases — and
this is so significant, so incisive for a true scientist of
spirit — we experience that
things turn out to be quite different from what we had
expected, having formed a judgment according to the standards
of the outer sense world. It transpires that on this path once
we have grasped the inward spiritual necessity, we achieve
results that cannot in any way be imagined on the basis of what
we know from the sense world, because as far as the sense world
is concerned they are quite contradictory. In
experiencing this, which can in no way be compared to
anything in the sense world, we know what it means to say that
the spirit, which we have discovered, orders the sequence of
our soul experiences just as our ideas which we formulate about
the outer sense world are ordered according to the physical
sequence of events.

And these two things come together: what we have
acquired in inner strength by means of true
self-observation, and what we have acquired of the objective
course of the spirit, which is like the course of the outer
sense-world. These come together and lead the human soul into a
region of the spirit to which it belongs with its spiritual
organs, just as the ordinary scientist is led into the bodily
organization when he proceeds from hunger to non-physical
processes in the body. When we use the soul as the
starting point for investigating the spirit, certain phenomena
of human soul life take on a new aspect. When the scientist of
spirit is touched in this way by the real form, the real
character, of the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life
become quite different. This happens, above all, when, by means
of the spiritual nature he has acquired through
self-observation, the human being has come to recognize the
spiritual which gives direction to the soul life. It is only
then that he is able to formulate a true idea, a true concept,
of what we call the ego of the human being, which bestows as
much of the spirit on the human soul as is bestowed of the body
on normal human consciousness by the visible form and
physiognomy. We cannot investigate the ego by
philosophizing about it, but only by making
the will into thinking and the thinking into an act
of will. By means of
self-observation the will becomes an instrument
of thinking and the thinking an instrument of will. This is a
'change of spirit' rather like the change of matter which is
sought and found in the physical world in our digestion. We
then approach the ego not by
philosophizing, speculation or hypotheses,
but we first acquire a real spiritual observation of the ego
and are only then in a position to formulate a correct view of
it. This correct view of it proves to us that it is impossible
to achieve such a view of the ego in ordinary life, in our
ordinary consciousness. The picture which this ordinary
consciousness (which is also prevalent in natural science) has
of the ego, is that the latter gradually evolves as the body
grows. A child does not appear to have an ego. As the body
develops and gradually acquires its proper configuration the
ego appears to wrestle its way out of the body. This view is
held as a matter of course, and with the normal outlook of
today it is not possible to arrive at any other view. And this
is just what one has to achieve as a scientist of
spirit — that one has to give
the ordinary outlook its due in its own sphere and not become
intolerant because one realizes that only one view is possible
in the sphere in which materialism can operate.

In achieving spiritual observation and observation of the
ego it is possible to see where the error of the ordinary
outlook lies. It can be characterized in the following way. If
we reflect about the relationship of the lungs to the air, we
know that lungs and air belong together. But because in this
case ordinary observation suffices to ascertain the true
relationship, no one knowing things only from a
superficial viewpoint would come to any other view than
that air comes from outside, penetrates into the lungs, is then
breathed out of the lungs and returns to the atmosphere
outside. Because this kind of observation suffices, no one
could maintain that the lung itself creates the air, that the
air which is breathed out somehow has its origin in the lung
itself, that the lung produces air. Our ordinary
observation gives us insight into the relationship of the
lungs to the air. Likewise our higher, spiritual observation
gives us insight into the human ego. When we can use this
observation which I have described, we know that the
human ego is no more connected to the bodily nature, that is,
to everything we have inherited from our father and
mother, than the air which comes from outside has to do with
the lungs. We get to know the ego as it really is and we know
that in taking over what is inherited at birth or conception,
in a sense it inhales out of the spiritual world. As a mass of
air that at a particular moment is in our lungs, has flowed in
from outside, so the ego flows out of the spiritual world into
the bodily nature, out of the world in which it existed before
the body could even be thought of in terms of conception and
birth. Likewise, when the human being goes through the gate of
death it flows out again, just as air which has been used up by
the body flows out again from the lungs. We get to know the
connection of the ego to a spiritual world that is independent
of the world of the human body, just as in physics we learn
about the connection of air to a greater mass of air which is
independent of the human lung. This is how we rise to real
knowledge of the ego, and it is the first thing we come to know
about the nature of the ego. From this point we learn more and
more by intensifying our spiritual observation by means of the
methods described in the above-mentioned books. We learn about
the ego as something independent of the life of the body in the
same way that we learn about the body by using hunger and
thirst as our starting points for investigating the chemical
and physical processes of the body with physical methods. Only
we discover the spiritual, which gives us our first view of the
ego, as a state where the ego is embedded in spiritual beings.
In order to know the physical body in all its aspects, we
divide it into its various members. In a similar way we have to
link the ego to other spiritual beings, which can be observed
by spiritual observation with the methods I have described. The
ego is linked to them and we find a complete ego-organism. This
then extends beyond the individual life of the
body.

Starting from the ego, from the part of our soul life
that is directed toward the ego, we find that it is embedded in
a spiritual life that exists before birth and continues after
the gate of death is passed through. In the spiritual world we
find a soul-spirit world that in the first instance is
independent of the physical world. The ego belongs to
this soul- spirit world. The first entities that we find there
are spirit- soul beings with whom the ego of man is connected,
beings that are human souls before or after death, with whom
the human being is himself connected, and also other beings.
When we observe the sense world we find a kingdom below man,
the animal kingdom. In the soul-spirit world we find first of
all a sphere to which the human ego belongs, which it fits into
organically, where it performs its transformation of spirit,
its spiritual digestion — a
spirit-soul sphere which in the first instance is of a purely
spirit-soul nature. Then we find a sphere ranking above this
one, just as the animal kingdom ranks above the plant kingdom,
and it ranks higher because in these higher spheres beings are
to be found which are not only connected to us in our soul and
spirit nature, in our inner life, but which are still more
powerful because they bring about the harmony existing between
the spirit-soul and the physical-bodily nature. For our spirit-
soul nature has to be brought into relationship with our
physical-bodily nature. This relationship is brought about by
higher spiritual beings than we first meet.

Having made a start with spiritual investigation, we
should not hesitate to speak about these real, concrete,
spirit- soul beings that we really discover. The spiritual
regions are discovered in which the ego performs its
transformation of spirit, just as the physical kingdoms are
discovered when we direct our attention to the animals, plants
and minerals. And we discover further where lies the mystery of
the soul entering and leaving the body. For we come to know how
the relationship of the ego to the body of the human being
works.

Here, it is true, we are entering a sphere which is quite
remote from the present-day outlook, but which in future will
have to become more and more a part of this outlook. If we
observe the ego in this way we find it is related with the
spirit-soul beings of the higher spiritual spheres, which range
above the purely natural spheres. But in the
transformation of spirit, which is analogous to the
transformation of matter in digestion, the ego undergoes
a certain process. To begin with, it can only be associated
with spirit- soul beings. This is the case before birth and
after death, where it has a purely spiritual being for its
organization and this is linked to the rest of the spirit
world. As the ego proceeds through the spirit world, as it
develops in the spirit world, it increasingly acquires a
self-orientation and becomes gradually separated from the
spirit world. The picture we have of the ego from the science
of spirit is that long before birth or after death it has a
special connection to many, many spiritual beings. Then as its
development proceeds, it separates itself off and becomes in a
sense dependent upon itself. It is in undergoing this
separation and limitation that it evolves the power of
attraction toward the bodily nature. This power of attraction
impels it to unite itself —
as the air unites itself to the lungs
— with the bodily nature that arises
in the course of human generations as a result of heredity. The
ego enters into this when it comes from the spirit
world.

Thus we gain a true view of the eternal working within
the bodily nature of man, within the human being as a whole,
not by philosophical speculation, but by laying bare this
eternal, by entering into the eternal ourselves with our souls.
This is the way spiritual observation works. We must be quite
sure to realize that everything I have described
— the striving for self-observation,
the striving to guide the will into our thought and imaginative
life, the striving to attain the transformation of
spirit — that all this is
really only a preparation. Everything else has to be waited
for. Just as we have to wait for what the sense world speaks to
us when it approaches the soul from outside, so we have to wait
for what the spirit-world speaks to us. Self-observation,
the guidance of the will into the thought and imaginative
life, these have to be striven for in order to prepare the soul
to experience the spirit. Spiritual life then begins, but it
has to penetrate toward the sphere of the soul and of the
spirit.

Thus I have outlined the ways which lead us to see our
real soul life in thinking, feeling and willing as an
expression of the spiritual, just as hunger, thirst and
the need to breathe are an expression in the soul of what lives
in the body. This then leads to the
differentiation of the
eternal-spiritual from the soul
nature.

Tomorrow we shall have to describe how something of the
eternal in the human being finds its way into ordinary
consciousness as a revelation of the unconscious. My
intention today was to show how we rise from the sphere
of the soul to the spirit. This description, which is a
description of knowledge gained by the science of spirit,
appears, it is true, to be paradoxical to the normally accepted
concepts of today. But you will perhaps have seen that the
science of spirit takes its science just as seriously as does
natural science. Natural science leads to the perishable and
transitory, the science of spirit leads to the eternal,
to the imperishable, without which the
perishable can[not], in fact, be explained.
Thus we can say that from the vantage point of the science of
spirit we are able to have an overall view of what is portrayed
in natural science. It is only then that we can really
appreciate the value of natural science, and are then in a
position to judge it. If we get no further than natural science
we arrive at the judgment or belief that a stringent science is
only possible within the sense world, that it cannot rise to
the eternal. If we take up the science of spirit, we know why
the natural scientist has to say
this if he does not get beyond the position of natural science.
But by developing our normal consciousness, by laying
bare the spiritual forces slumbering in the soul, we recognize
that man can penetrate into the eternal of his own being, into
what is really immortal in himself, for this immortal part of
him, in fact, makes its own existence known itself. The red
color of the rose does not have to be proved. The spirit in us
that goes through birth and death also testifies to its own
existence when we are able to observe it.

Anyone basing his observation on the science of spirit
has an overall view of natural science as well, and he also
gives the latter its due. He does not do what those who follow
only natural science do, who —
consciously or unconsciously
— undo what the science of spirit
does and wish to take the ground away from under its feet. We
may well say that the scientist of spirit has nothing to be
afraid of. He need not fear the objections which come from
various quarters, for he knows what these objections are
worth, and can also recognize why they have to be made. He is
quite justified in thinking that he does not need to try
to prevent someone from recognizing the methods and progress of
natural science. On the contrary. The scientist of spirit is
able to say to someone wishing to go into natural science: Go
your way to natural science and if you do not only look at it
with the eyes of the natural scientific outlook, but with the
eyes of the spiritual way of investigation, you will not only
find no contradiction between natural science and the science
of spirit, but you will also find everywhere in natural science
the confirmation and revelation of what the science of spirit
says. And we should not believe that the scientist of spirit
has any wish to prevent those whom he addresses from following
any particular religious confession. It is the greatest
misunderstanding of all to believe that we wish to set up any
sort of religious gulf between a religious approach and
the science of spirit. Dr. Rittelmeyer
has shown quite clearly in an admirable article
in ChristlicheWelt how in a quite
objective way the science of spirit can be a foundation
for religious life, that it does not take anyone away from true
religious life, but, on the contrary, leads them toward
it.

The science of spirit does not need to keep people away
from religious life. Just as it can say: go to natural science
in order to realize what the science of spirit is, so it can
also say: go to religion, come to know religion, experience
religion, and you will find that what the science of spirit is
able to give to the soul gives religious life its foundation
and strengthens it.

Go out into life itself and you will find that the
concepts given in the science of spirit do not deaden you to
life or make you unfit for life, but that they make the spirit
mobile, agile, and place the human being into life, ready for
action. Practical life, too, will be a confirmation and proof
of what the science of spirit is able to give to the human
being.

Because natural science has to keep to its own course,
has to direct its attention solely to nature and may not mix
nature with anything of soul and spirit, it is imperative for
the science of spirit to find its place alongside it as equally
justified. The science of spirit must penetrate from the soul
to the spirit, just as natural science has to penetrate from
the soul to the physical body. The time will then come when the
real essence, the real basic concept of the science of spirit,
will be understood, when the intentions of the
scientists — to take
the ground away from the science of spirit
— will be seen in their true light.
Forty or fifty years ago Dubois-Reymond was able to
say: “Science ends where the
super-sensible begins.” In the
future this saying will be confronted by another arising out of
the spiritual scientific view: What was really happening when
natural science wanted to formulate a system of thought, a view
of the world that is super-sensible, when it restricted itself
to nature above? In a sense one could see that there is
something that surrounds the human being in his existence
and in which he has his roots, that comes from a particular
origin. One saw it rooted in the spirit, but could not
penetrate into this spirit.

The science of spirit shows how we can penetrate into
spiritual life. The kind of position which natural science has
occupied regarding the spirit —
if I may use the comparison —
is rather as if one were to see a tree which has its
roots in the ground. The tree cannot be seen entirely, for the
roots are in the ground. The tree is then dug up in order to
see it in its entirety, for nothing of the tree may remain
hidden. The tree will dry up and will no longer be able to
flourish. — This is what has
been done by the scientific outlook. It has dug up the
being of man out of its foundations in order to acquire an
overall view. The resulting view is then like the tree that has
been taken out of the ground. The tree has to wither away, and
the life that arises out of this view of the world has to
wither away. Once this is realized, the way to the science of
spirit will be found.

In order to acquire an overall view, the being of man has
been deprived of its roots. For the sake of life, for the sake
of real life, the human being will once again be immersed in
what is popularly called the unconscious, but which, when it is
revealed in the sphere of consciousness, can be raised into the
sphere of real knowledge of the super-sensible. Then the time
will come when the view will be firmly implanted in the human
mind that the eternal core of man's being is rooted in the
spirit and that if we want to get to know the human being in
his entirety we have to penetrate to the spirit. Then it will
no longer be said, as Dubois-Reymond did, that science cannot
find the super-sensible, not even in its simplest form of
manifestation, that this is where science stops, but the
science of the future will say that all science that is not
rooted in the super-sensible will not be in a
position to explain existence, will not be able
to lead us into the life of existence, but will only be able to
kill existence. It will not be said that science ends where
supra-naturalism, the super-sensible, begins, but, the life of
science ends where the human being no longer
takes his stand in the super-sensible, and the
death of science enters where the super-sensible is
abandoned.